Moving deliberately but with sickening speed, creatures that appeared made of the same glowing green stone got to their feet and charged. They hammered at the wall, joined now by more mundane stones hurled by the catapults and huge tree trunks rammed into the great gate door. Two ogres were pounding on the door with their clubs, and the timber shuddered. From within, Durotan could hear cries of fury and horror as the draenei tried to battle the creatures—“infernals,” as he heard one warlock refer to them. Most of the warlocks were using these new servants, but a few still had the smaller, more familiar creatures obeying their commands.
The city could not last long under such an assault. With a mighty crash, an entire section of stone wall crumbled. The tide of crazed orcs and bellowing ogres swarmed through the breech thus created, shrieking and swinging weapons. Durotan remained where he was, rooted to the earth, watching as the orcs fought and killed and died.
The rage and fury he had seen them display before in the thick of battle was nothing compared to what he saw now. There was no strategy, no attempt at defense, no calls for retreat when retreat was necessary. This was nothing more than murder and slaughter, dealing death and receiving it, stupidly rushing into dead ends where traps had been laid. Such was to be expected from the ogres, and as they fell heavily, blood streaming from their bodies, Durotan did not mourn them. But the orcs … they were beyond caring about anything but the sensation of their own blood singing in their veins and the battle cries pouring from their throats.
Dozens … no, no, hundreds would die this night. The casualties would render the city unlivable. Come sunrise, blue and green bodies would litter the streets. But for now, it was carnage and chaos and the very depths of insanity. Durotan swung his axe because it was fight or die, and even now, even though he knew his people were on a dark road, he did not wish death.
Kil’jaeden and Mannoroth stood together, watching the green meteors that housed infernals crashing to the earth. “They swarm like insects,” grunted Mannoroth. Kil’jaeden nodded, pleased. “Indeed. It is beautiful to watch, I am well pleased.”
“What next?”
Kil’jaeden turned eyes of mild surprise on his lieutenant. “Next? There is no next, at least not here. The orcs have fulfilled my purpose. They burn with your blood, my friend. It will consume them eventually unless they have an outlet for it, and that outlet is only to be found in slaughtering every last draenei on the face of this world.”
He watched as fire joined the glowing green hue in the distance.
“It is well that you are done here,” Mannoroth said. “Archimonde mutters that you are wasting time, and our master wishes us elsewhere.”
Kil’jaeden sighed. “You speak the truth. Sargeras hungers, and he has been very patient with me. I do regret one thing—that I won’t be watching as they gut Velen. Ah well. Enough to know that it happened. Let us leave this place.”
He gestured, and both he and his lieutenant disappeared.
“What do you mean, he was not there?” Gul’dan shrieked. This could not be.
“What I said,” Blackhand growled. “We scoured the city. Velen was nowhere to be found.”
“Perhaps an overeager grunt found him first and mutilated the body,” Gul’dan said nervously. This was not good news. He had instructed Blackhand to find the corpse of the prophet Velen and bring the draenei’s head to Gul’dan. It was to be a present to Kil’jaeden.
“Possible. Even likely,” Blackhand said. “But from what you told me, even if his body had been hacked to pieces, he could not have been mistaken for an ordinary draenei.”
Gul’dan shook his head, feeling worried and slightly sick. The draenei had blue skin and black hair. Velen, their prophet, had pale white skin and white hair. As long as a piece of his skin remained whole, he could be identified.
“You scoured the city?”
Blackhand’s brows drew together. “I told you we did,” he said darkly. His breath started to quicken and his eyes turned even redder as anger rose in him.
Gul’dan nodded. Besotted though the orcs were by bloodlust, they would not have failed to search for the body most coveted by their leader. The reward would be too great, the anger if it were overlooked and discovered later too furious.
Somehow, Velen had escaped. That meant that there were probably other draenei out there. In a sudden panic that made his heart race, he wondered just how many he had let slip through his fingers … and where in this wide, wide world they had gone.
Once Velen had had an entire temple, filled with acolytes and priests and servants, in which to meditate and pray. Now, he was in a small room, one of only a handful who even had their own room. He held the violet crystal in his hand and tears poured silent and unheeded down his face.
He watched the fall of the city. He had wanted to stay, to lend his own not inconsiderable magic to the fray, but that path would have meant death—not merely his own, but that of his people. They did not need a marshal now. The orcs, their systems permeated with demonic blood, burned with a lust for killing that would not be sated even if they slew every last draenei in Draenor, would never be sated until death stiffened their corpses. Kil’jaeden’s and Sargeras’s Burning Legion of demonic forces owned them now. The orcs had numbers, ogres, warlocks, and a fury that would take them physically and emotionally to places where no rational mind would dare travel. There was nothing Velen could do but let the city fall, for there was nothing he could do that could possibly save it.
Nor could the orcs be saved. The only flicker of hope for the eventual redemption of the Horde lay in the single clan who had not drunk the blood, had not made the pact, whose minds and hearts were still their own. Some eighty orcs, and that was all. Eighty, to stand against over a dozen other clans, most much larger than their, whose Warchief was the worst of them all. The orcs would be treated as maddened beasts now, whenever any draenei chanced upon them; things to be put down quickly and mercifully, with the understanding that while the orcs did not fully know what they did, they must die regardless.
Velen had wanted to abandon the city, to have it standing empty when the orcs descended. Wanted to save as many draenei lives as he could. But Larohir, the quick-speaking, intelligent general who had succeeded Restalaan after the latter’s murder, had convinced him it would not work.
“If there is an insufficient number of draenei to slaughter,” Larohir had said, his voice soft and compassionate but yet hard as steel, “then the lust that consumes them will not even be sated temporarily. They will still hunger and catch our scent while it is new, and track us down. Those who flee will die. They must believe that they have slain most of us. And in order for them to believe that … it must be true.”
Velen had stared in horror. “You would have me send my people to knowingly be slaughtered?”
“All but a handful of us know what we fled on Argus,” said Larohir. “We remember it. We remember what Kil’jaeden did, what happened to our people. We would—we will—happily die to preserve even a handful of our race uncorrupted.”
Velen had looked down then, his heart aching. “If the orcs believe they have slain us, except for a trivial handful, then Kil’jaeden will be satisfied. He will depart.”
“The orcs will suffer greatly,” said Larohir, and did not look displeased. After what the orcs had done to the draenei recently, Velen could not blame him. “They will. And I have no doubt that they will continue to track us down.”